Pinterest Retail Eseller Guide 2012

Everything you need to know
about selling on Pinterest

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Pinterest
Contents
What is Pinterest?...........................................................................................................................................3
........................................................................................................................
Why is Pinterest a big deal for ecommerce?
(By Seamus Whittington, ChannelAdvisor)...............................................................................................4
Is Pinterest right for me? (By Jacob Dutton, 383 Project)....................................................................5
How do pins work?........................................................................................................................................6
How to encourage pinning from your own site (By Laura Brown, KISS PR)...................................7
Top tip: include the price tag......................................................................................................................8
Top tip: Use high-quality photography to sell more
(By David Brint, SpinMe)................................................................................................................................9
Top tip: Partner and engage with other pinners
(By Meredith Oliver, Creating WOW Comms).......................................................................................10
Top tip: Use social media to promote Pinterest....................................................................................11
The importance of the soft sell (By Jacob Dutton, 383 Project)......................................................12
Using Pinterest to try out new product lines (By Avin Wong, WhichSocial.com)........................13
Final notes to sell more...............................................................................................................................14
Recommended reading from eSellerMedia.com.................................................................................15

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Pinterest
1What is
Pinterest?
Pinterest is
the latest
social media
phenomenon
to take the
web by storm.
This is not an exaggeration: according to comScore,
Pinterest is the fastest social media platform in history
to surpass the ten million unique visitor mark.
While for users, the draw is that Pinterest allows
them to share and discover beautiful images, videos
and products; for ecommerce entrepreneurs, the
marketing potential is obvious: Pinterest is a perfect
platform to increase interest – and therefore sales – in
your products.
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Pinterest
2Why is Pinterest
a big deal for
ecommerce?
Pinterest is
everyone’s
favourite
current
example of
the power of
social and,
with eighty
per cent of
pins being
products,
it’s a perfect
forum for
ecommerce.
With Japanese ecommerce giant Rakuten’s recent
$100m investment in the site, Pinterest is clearly on a
path where it will monetise via ecommerce.
Rakuten is an interesting partner for Pinterest, as it
will allow the platform to benefit from Rakuten’s vast
network of marketplaces, affiliate networks and other
ecommerce assets.
The site is already more commercial than Facebook
and Twitter – most of the conversations on Pinterest
are product-related.
Combine Pinterest’s 12 million actively-engaged and
product-centric consumers with an open community
of new curators and tastemakers, and you have
a strong new ecommerce channel for customer
engagement, market research and, most importantly,
online sales.
You cannot predict the future with social, however, so
we’ll have to wait and see how image-based players
like Pinterest fare on the social commerce scene.
Seamus Whittington is MD EMEA at ecommerce
specialists ChannelAdvisor.
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Pinterest
3
Is Pinterest right
for me? What
sort of business
should use it?
When
considering
whether
Pinterest is
right for your
business, it’s
important to
understand
the psyche
and needs
of the
consumers
using it.
There has been a lot of focus on the fact that Pinterest
is perfect for women in their mid-30s, planning a
wedding/new home/baby shower. However, while it’s
still “new”, it also has a trendy vibe, which offers a lot of
opportunities for businesses to engage with younger,
tech savvy consumers.
A number of fashion brands such as Forever 21
and Fossil have shown how attracting followers on
Pinterest can be of benefit. However, neither appear to
have created content specifically for the network, so it
is impossible to gauge its real potential yet.
As an engagement opportunity, Pinterest could be
right for any business which has data that can be
presented in a visual format.
Infographics have become a powerful marketing tool
in recent years and Pinterest is a great platform to
share them with a growing audience (currently over
12 million) – as long as they have been designed to be
engaging of course!
Jacob Dutton is a senior client partner at creative
agency 383 Project.
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Pinterest
4How do pins work?
Each pinned item can then be “Liked”, clicked on to
open into a larger picture, or re-pinned to the visitor’s
own Pinterest profile.
The most important thing you need to do is add a
“Pin It” button to your website, inviting your users to
pin your products onto Pinterest. It’s a simple process,
which you can do from here:
www.pinterest.com/about/goodies/
The “Pin It” button is made to look and feel like the
Facebook and Twitter buttons that internet users
already use every day. For best results, place the “Pin It”
button near your other social sharing tools.
Pinterest is
a picture-
sharing
platform
where users
can create
themed
boards to
pin pictures,
videos and
discussions
too.
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Pinterest
5How to encourage
pinning from
your own site
1. Cross-promote your Pinterest site:
Like Twitter and Facebook, you can add a follow
button to your website. Find out how:
www.pinterest.com/about/goodies
2. Competitions:
Encourage people to pin things by holding a
competition asking them to create a board and send
you a link, or pin something and tag your ecommerce
site or campaign name – the coolest entry wins a
prize!
3. Pin brand-related images:
Don’t just fill your boards with pins of your products;
it’s boring. Interject pins with other images, which also
reflect your brand’s lifestyle or products, or some pithy
quotes to express your brand personality.
4. Be specific:
Organise your boards well, and ensure they follow
a theme and are titled clearly – this will attract more
followers. Also incorporate key words onto boards
already used in your SEO strategy to ensure maximum
exposure.
Laura Brown is social media manager at KISS Public
Relations
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Pinterest
6Top Tip:
Include the
price tag
Pins with prices get 36 per cent more “likes” than those
without, so it’s vital to remember to include a price on
the image, in the description and tag.
By tagging the price when uploading your pin, your
product will be pulled into the gifts section. This is a
visual display of products categorised by price, with
links through to purchase.
Don’t forget
to include a
price tag!
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Pinterest
7Top tip:
Use high-quality
photography to
sell more
The keywords
here are
honesty and
integrity.
If they can spin the product image around and control
it by zooming in on their preferred points of interest,
that’s the closest an image is going to give to a real-life
experience.
Lighting-wise, absolute clarity is important so that
people can see true colours. (But you do need to
bear in that colour is affected by monitors – the same
image seen on three different screens would look
different.)
Make the product look as expensive as possible
without losing the honesty of what it really is. Shot
correctly, you can make a £5 product look like it’s
worth £25, providing the product stacks up to that
value.
Put your brand and identity across. Rather than
photographing all products with a white background,
use a colour associated with your branding – this can
often set each product off in a cleaner fashion.
David Brint is marketing director at online imaging
specialist SpinMe.
From an ecommerce
professional’s point of view,
the art is to provide extremely
high quality imaging that
gives consumers the
confidence that they are
seeing the product online
just as well as they would see
it in-store.
The most effective images
have good lighting, good
focus and a large, clear
product picture that the
consumer can interact with.
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Pinterest
8Top tip:
Partner and engage
with other pinners
Just like any
other social
network, you
need to make
an effort to
encourage
interaction
with other
pinners and
bloggers.
Repin and like other people’s content. Look for alliance
partners to cross-promote each other’s products and
services.
Part of this is also creating new and interesting content
which other pinners and bloggers will engage with.
Post new content consistently; this will attract new
followers and increase visibility. Pin images that relate
to how-to articles and other resources.
When you establish yourself as an expert in your
industry, more users will show interest in your
business, and ultimately create more sales.
Meredith Oliver is the founder of web marketing firm
Creating WOW Communications.
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Pinterest
9Top tip:
Use social media to
promote Pinterest
While
Pinterest
is a social
network in
its own right,
ecommerce
professionals
should
leverage
other social
networks
to make the
most of the
site.
Pinterest’s success is, in part, due to how tightly it is
integrated with Facebook.
Yet the site is already more commercial than Facebook
and Twitter – most of the conversations on Pinterest
are product-related.
It is also tightly integrated with Facebook, using a user’s
existing social graph to attract more “Pinners”, as pins
are automatically shared with all of the user’s Facebook
friends, creating a viral effect.
Pinterest’s success is in part due to how tightly it is
integrated with Facebook. Pinterest uses Facebook
data from a user’s existing social graph to attract more
‘Pinners’, as Pins are automatically shared with all of
the user’s Facebook friends, creating a viral effect.
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Pinterest
10The importance
of the soft sell
Pinterest
has been
heralded as
the first real
opportunity
for brands to
turn a social
channel
into a sales
channel.
Like Tumblr before it, Pinterest offers a fantastic
opportunity to share visual content and make
customers feel like they are being given something
extra.
A great example of this is the recent Hunger Games
premiere. The Capitol Couture blog was created on
Tumblr from the point of view of The Hunger Games
universe, featuring exclusive content.
Fans were encouraged to re-blog images and take part
in “District Style Challenges” where, by submitting their
photos to the blog they had the chance to win tickets
to the premiere. It is this content that can’t be found
anywhere else that will drive the best returns for brands
in these new channels.
For brands to be truly successful through Pinterest,
they need to embrace the culture of the network and
contribute to it. Simply sharing existing catalogue
images isn’t enough.
Jacob Dutton is a senior client partner at creative
agency 383 Project.
However, rather than trying
to drive a financial return
from it, brands should be
looking to leverage Pinterest
for what all social channels
are best at – increasing
engagement.
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Pinterest
11Using Pinterest
to try out new
product lines
Enlightened
brands and
ecommerce
professionals
are
increasingly
using
Pinterest
to test new
product
lines.
In fashion retail, for example, Pinterest provides huge
opportunities to reach the right audience with the right
offers, at the right time. Women’s apparel is one of the
most popular categories on the site, with one of the
highest levels of pinning activity.
Companies have adopted “pin it to win it” strategies,
which incentivise consumers to pin or re-pin products
in order to win prizes or discounts.
Ecommerce entrepreneurs can create boards
specifically for new product lines and ask followers to
vote by re-pinning their favourites, for example. This
could be a great testing ground and a cost-effective
way of analysing the popularity of new items, while
also driving consumers towards a purchase.
Avin Wong is director of marketing analytics software
firm WhichSocial.com
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Pinterest
12Final notes
to sell more
The key to
getting more
sales out of
Pinterest
is, as with
all social
networks,
engagement.
Here are our final tips on how to get the most out of
Pinterest:
1. Pin powerful images: The most effective images
are simple and engaging; they help to showcase your
products in their best light.
2. Create killer captions: When you upload your own
content to Pinterest, include a call to action in the
description (such as “click here” or “sign up here”).
3. Use keywords: Include a hashtag in front of your
keywords so that your pin shows up in searches
4. Include a link to your product page: A backlink to
your site will drive potential buyers to your ecommerce
website, but it will also improve your site’s SEO.
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Pinterest
13Recommended
reading from
eSellerMedia.com
Monetising Pinterest: challenges and advantages
http://esellermedia.com/2012/07/03/monetising-
pinterest-challenges-advantages/
Pinterest: The Power of Pinning for eCommerce
http://esellermedia.com/2012/04/26/pinterest-the-
power-of-pinning-for-ecommerce/
The seven steps to great content
http://esellermedia.com/2012/06/17/the-seven-steps-
great-content/
How Pinterest drives sales online
http://esellermedia.com/2012/08/03/how-pinterest-
drives-sales-online/
Pinterest and the power shift in fashion retailing
http://esellermedia.com/2012/06/03/pinterest-and-
the-power-shift-in-fashion-retailing/
Pinterest backed for $100m
http://esellermedia.com/2012/05/18/pinterest-backed-
for-100m/
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Pinterest Retail Eseller Guide 2012

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